Technical Tip – EZ Power Steering
Technical Tip – EZ Power Steering: As I am sure most of you are aware. I am a bit hampered by a wonky Right arm, the side effect of a spinal compression operation some 16 months ago. My arm has precluded me from driving my LHD Morgans, primarily because I cannot lift my Right arm up to the steering wheel to help my Left arm in steering the car. This is mostly problematic when I am trying to maneuver around a parking space or in my driveway.
This problem led me to seek out power steering systems for my Morgan. Well, all the usual UK sources declined to deal with a LHD car. ‘We used to but now we don’t . . . ‘ It seems the market is there but only for RHD cars? Then there was the issue of my Roadster and its ‘Air Conditioning’ (?). As I understand it the new four wheelers (the CX chassis cars) have electrical assisted power steering standard, or are available from MMC, but these cars are not in the US yet.
Those with the older cars (Pre CX) are on their own. I asked around about Power Steering options and got a strong recommendation from a Morgan friend in Australia; EZ Power Steering, in the Netherlands. www.EZPowersteering.nl
As I understand it, these folks supplied Morgan with electrical power steering systems, until such time as Morgan adopted the BMW solution (along with the BMW power systems) for the CX cars.
If you Google EZ Power Steering, you will be faced with many similar sounding businesses. Be careful or you will go down some strange rabbit hole!
After a few diversions I went straight to the Company’s web site in the Netherlands. www.EZPowersteering.nl Don’t be concerned, as they fail to list Morgan as a supported car (they allude to only listing their best sellers?) They showed me pictures of a good number of systems on their work bench, and I ordered mine on Tuesday and had delivery on Thursday. (I suspect a US distribution point!) Not only that, their Installation Manual had lots of photographs showing the system being installed in a Morgan Roadster, not some unfamiliar vehicle!
It took a handful of folks a day and half to install the system and test drive it thoroughly. It works, and seems to work well. The steering in the drive is a one-handed affair! Bottom line: I can now drive the Roadster. I even had my wife test it and she liked it as well!
The Dutch Company also has a few other Morgan solutions that look quite positive. They offer an ‘eccentric’ steering wheel mount for those you that need a bit more room under the steering wheel and a very pretty steering wheel center button that hides the screw heads and reduces the sun’s reflection off the shiny wheel. Visit their web site www.EZPowersteering.nl .
Cheers, Mark Braunstein
While the installation was pretty much as described and photoed the mounting of the electrics is different. It took a few changes to get the computer box up under the dash. Apparently the European Morgans have a different fuse box location from the US spected Morgans. A 10 x 10 piece of aluminum mounting bracket was fabricated to allow the box to mount on the top side of the passenger’s footwell.